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NBA FINALS: HEAT v MAVERICKSJune 14, 2006Avery JohnsonMIAMI, FLORIDA: Practice Day Q. Why do you think the rebound battle has gotten away from you guys and is the way to fix it simply effort or is there a strategic element to it as well? AVERY JOHNSON: Well, it's really disappointing when we end up getting stops and sometimes their best shot is a missed shot. I think it's just having maybe two guys in the vicinity to rebound and not have five. So we are in situations sometimes where we're attempting to run without the basketball. Q. Is part of how you're trying to defend Shaq and Wade affecting your ability to rebound? AVERY JOHNSON: Sometimes, but even when we are in situations where we're matched up, last night, they tended to get the rebound. So we just got to try to outhustled them, be a little bit more physical. Q. Are you struck by the fact, you seemed to be in total control of that game, you were on like a 34-26 run, had a 13-point lead, and all of the sudden you didn't have any control at all? AVERY JOHNSON: Again, that happens. You hope that you can keep control of the game and do what you were doing that got you the lead. They turned up their defense, started off with a Jason Williams three, and we got caught in between on our rotations there. You know, Wade made a three, he had not been making threes the whole series. We got bogged down offensively. We lost our floor offensively. We kind of looked like the old Mavericks, you know, just playing on one side and one pass, instead of moving the ball like we did to get the lead. So there are things that we do pretty good when we're playing well, and when we're not playing well, there are things that consistently show up. But again, this is The Finals. You know, we win one game, we're supposed to sweep. We win two games, the series is over. It's just -- it's Sarah, can I say asinine? It's asinine to me. (Laughter). Q. Do you think you've done so well rebounding in the playoffs that you guys maybe got a little complacent about it? AVERY JOHNSON: We didn't get off to good starts, that's the thing that's bothering me. We haven't gotten off to good starts in any of these games. Yes, we held them to a certain amount of points, 18, I think, in the first quarter of Game 2. They had maybe 12, 10 or 12 points after the first six minutes in Game 1, but here we are stuck on 7 points to start the game. So the starts of our games have been horrendous. And we've seemed like we've been kind of fighting an uphill battle and obviously we're able to turn that around in the third quarter of Game 2, and second quarter of Game 2 with Stack making all of those threes and a little bit in Game 3 in the third quarter. Again, we have not started off games particularly well. Q. What kind of psychological work, if any, do you have to do with this team to get it to bounce back after a loss like last night? AVERY JOHNSON: We are always talking and addressing the mental state of our team. It's not like it's fragile or anything. We've come a long way mentally. Early in the season, you know, it was pretty much an overhaul process. We've come a long ways and we have some leaders like Armstrong and Stackhouse that have helped the coach in that area tremendously to be able to deal with the rest of the players. Josh Howard has matured incredibly this year. Terry has made some progress. Devin has made some progress. So again, I told our team that we were in for a battle. This is a 7-game series. Whether we're up 2-0, down 0-2, up 2-1, down 1-2, it really doesn't matter. It's about grinding out this whole series. Wade came back with an incredible performance last night to beat us. Q. You talked about losing consistency and losing flow in that fourth quarter. Can you just talk about how you're sitting there and Shaq hits two free throws, Dirk misses one down on the end and just talk about how that played into the whole emotional thing, and then on top of that, the pressure of Dirk taking that shot. It's as loud as it's ever been in here. AVERY JOHNSON: I don't know how loud it's been here, but we'll take Dirk in that situation a hundred times. I don't even blink in that situation. It catches us by surprise when any of our better free throw shooters miss free throws. So he's going to get the ball. You know, Game 7 against San Antonio, made a strong drive, finished the shot and made the free throw, so everybody is pumped up. So we still love him. I'm not going to take away any of his per diem or anything like that. It's just an unfortunate situation. But we could have done things along the way that maybe could have eluded us from being in that position. Q. Historically people talk about the psychology of the series and whether a game carries over, bleeds over into the next game or whatnot. From your experience with your team, how much of a concern is that, emotionally that they will be hurt by that? AVERY JOHNSON: On one part, it's always a concern. But normally, normally we respond well after losses. Normally we'll go out and have a good practice, which we're going to do shortly. We'll watch some film and try to make whatever necessary adjustments. But hopefully we can just bring more energy throughout the game. We take pride in winning the rebound game. We didn't win it. We got beaten up pretty good on the boards last night. So again, we normally respond well. We try to make whatever necessary adjustments to give our team the best opportunity to have success. So again, these are two teams that are pretty evenly matched. And sometime it just comes down to will.
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